The Ronald McDonald House in Hyde Park will likely need three to four months of repairs before it can operate at full capacity after a frozen pipe burst early Friday morning, displacing seven families whose children are receiving care at nearby Comer Children’s Hospital.

“We’ll rebuild the Ronald McDonald House, which is a home away from home for our families,” Holly Buckendahl, chief executive officer of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana, told me Monday. “In the interim, we’ll just find another way to help them. It takes a village to do what we do every day, and the community has always been there for the families. That will just look a little different for the next three months.”

For now, the seven families are staying in hotel rooms near Comer, but Buckendahl and her staff are working to find an arrangement that feels a little more homey.

“Laundry service, home-cooked meals, grab ’n’ go lunches,” she said. “Access to the daily things they need, so they can focus on the health of their children.”

Maybe you want to help. A landing page on the Ronald McDonald House website lists suggested donations. A $125 donation will cover one family’s hotel stay. You can donate cash or gift cards for Uber or Lyft to cover families’ transportation to and from the hospital. You can drop off individually wrapped sandwiches for families to grab for lunch. (Call the Ronald McDonald House at 773-324-5437 to arrange a drop-off time and place.)

“Community support is vital right now,” Buckendahl said.

Ronald McDonald Houses operate in five locations in and around Chicago and more than 365 locations around the nation, providing food and lodging for families whose children need to stay in the hospital for an extended period. Most of the families at the Hyde Park location, Buckendahl said, live between three and five hours away from Comer.

Last year, I had the chance to interview Charlie Marino, the man who brought Chicago its first Ronald McDonald House, in 1977.

“Charlie is the closest person you’ll find to a saint,” Dayle Morrissey told me at the time.

The Morrisseys were the first family to stay at Chicago’s first Ronald McDonald House. Their baby girl, Kathey, was diagnosed with cancer at 10 months old. She went through two years of chemotherapy at Children’s Memorial.

Marino understood.

In 1975, Marino’s daughter, Gage, was diagnosed with stage 4 leukemia. When Marino was 11, he lost his 4-year-old brother to cancer.

Ed Baum, Gage’s oncologist, told the Marinos they could try to save her life with a clinical trial that involved nine chemotherapy drugs plus radiation. She was 6 years old at the time.

“As he put it, it was like trying to kill a mouse with an elephant drug,” Marino said. “It was a horrific barrage. But we went with it because there was no other hope for her.”

The treatments ravaged her immune system. She developed a lung condition that threatened to suffocate her. She spent months in the hospital, during which time the Marinos met families who traveled from all over the Midwest to see specialists at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital.

“We saw all these parents sleeping on chairs, living out of suitcases,” Marino recalled. “We asked Dr. Baum, ‘Has anyone ever thought of buying a house nearby where people can sleep?’ He said, ‘Oh, people have been talking about that for years.’”

Baum told the Marinos about the new Ronald McDonald House in Philadelphia, which Philadelphia Eagles general manager Jim Murray had helped establish after a player’s daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. It opened in 1974.

The Marinos flew to Philadelphia to tour the house. “It was perfect,” Marino said. “My wife said, ‘You don't have to reinvent the wheel. We’ve seen what it needs to be. Just don't mess it up.’”

With help from Murray and Baum, the Marinos set to work raising money and hunting for a location. Chicagoland McDonald's Association President Bill Chunowitz committed to raising $150,000, Marino said, and a couple of dozen families volunteered to hunt down furniture, carpeting, fixtures, you name it.

They purchased the convent from St. Clement’s Church at 622 W. Deming Place, which had 17 bedrooms, three kitchens, a laundry room and plenty of play spaces. It opened in 1977, bearing the name Ronald McDonald House — the second in the nation.

I thought about Marino and that story when I read about Friday’s burst pipe.

I also thought about something Richard Morrissey told me about what the Ronald McDonald House offered them. Food and shelter and proximity to their child, yes. But also community.

“You learn not to be proud,” Richard Morrissey said. “You learn to ask for help, ask for prayers, ask for support. You get a sense of empathy you never even considered until you see a child diagnosed with cancer. It was very reassuring to be around people who could relate.”